2015 Archive Stories Cars

Though eBay Motors, Craigslist and auction houses such as Barrett-Jackson are popular with vintage-car buyers, John Curran of Costa Mesa didn’t have to use any of them to find his 1971 Buick Skylark Custom 2-door hardtop. He only needed to look next door, where his neighbor – who liked to buy and resell cars – had recently acqu

Buy low, sell high. It’s a simple concept that works as well for the classic car market as it does for the stock market.
And though Bob Guarrera of Laguna Niguel doesn’t plan to sell his prized 1958 Chevrolet Corvette convertible anytime soon, he definitely bought low. How low? Try $650.
“Best investment I ever

The competition for the hearts, minds and wallets of car buyers often begins with the superficial. It’s a gut response to how it looks. Whether that’s sporty or elegant, the exterior is subliminal shorthand for how we hope to be perceived.
Take the Acura ILX, which, for its 2016 refresh, strives for the pre-parent market with

Walk through the low-slung government building out to the asphalt behind the Orange County District Attorney’s office, and you’ll end up in another era. This week, the back parking lot is a veritable stockpile of vintage vehicles – Ford Model Ts and Model As, Volkswagen Buses and Beetles, and dozens of other models &ndas

As Russell Wilson proved this past Super Bowl, interceptors can be game changing.
In football, life-altering moments occur in the blink of an eye when the pigskin’s caught by the wrong player. In motorcycles: The most significant changes happen over time and are forged with molten metal.
Take the Honda Interceptor, which, w

Motorcycle crashes are unpredictable. Where they happen, and at what speed, is immensely variable. But one thing is inevitable: The rider, at some point, makes contact with the ground.
Frequently, it’s a person’s head.
Helmets are often the first line of defense against catastrophic injury. Still, in the six decades s

First there’s the tire kicking, followed by the shmoozing, the haggling and, finally, the seemingly endless piles of paper that seal the deal on a new car purchase. It’s no wonder 90 percent of car buyers say they’d prefer the experience without the wheeling and dealing, according to a 2014 survey from

The key was a bit like Cinderella’s slipper. Made of glass, it was a beautiful and weighty thing, both physically and symbolically. Aston Martin’s winged logo was embedded deep in its crystal form – a subliminal underscoring of the brand’s out-of-reach reputation. Whoever had the good fortune of possessing it would be gra

When General Motors announced in late 2013 that Mary Barra would become its first female CEO, it was headline news. As the first woman to helm a major car maker, she had become a feminist icon overnight – proof that women could succeed at the highest levels of industry even in a male-dominated field. But that party didn’t last long.

It was about four years ago when I observed a young man at the L.A. Auto Show. Poised to take a photo of the Jaguar C-X16 sports car concept, he instead lowered his camera without snapping one.
“It’s a hybrid,” he sighed.
How things have changed. In just a few short years, the LaFerrari, BMW i8 and Porsche 918 S

To the general public, Geneva may be best known for its peacemaking, but car lovers know better. Each March, it’s a showcase for European innovation on four wheels. This year marks the 85th anniversary of the Geneva International Motor Show, and with it, dozens of debuts that are exclusive, stylish, surprising and, of course, sexy. But if

In the quaint environs of Burbank, the large black building is an anomaly.
Yet it’s there, just a block from one of the city’s big box shopping malls, that West Coast Customs has relocated its global headquarters, parking its Mad Max Magnum Opus with its bulldozer of a grille and spiked tires on a pad of concrete outside the

First, there was the young man who rolled down his window to ask what I was driving as his Mustang passed “my” Charger SRT in a parking lot. Then there was the pair of similarly aged men who gawked with envy as they unlocked the doors to their Nissan Sentra. And finally, the valet, who grinned after admitting he “stepped

If one Model A Ford is good, two are even better, to judge from the pair of Model A’s owned by Bill and Diane Maloy of Anaheim. Both cars – a 1930 Town Sedan and a 1931 Victoria coupe – have a long history with Diane’s family. “The four-door sedan was the family car and the two-door coupe was the one

“It’s a member of the family that lives in the garage” is the way David Cutler of Newport Beach describes his restored 1954 Chrysler New Yorker Deluxe convertible. And with good reason. His mother bought the car new in 1954 and it’s been in the family ever since.
“I can remember when Mother first bought it,

With so much automotive attention focused on self-driving cars, smartphone compatibility and top-secret minivans from Apple, something is getting lost: “The love of the actual car,” said Allen Gharapetian.
So he came up with a simple antidote.
For the last year, his Cypress-based arm of the automotive audio giant Clar

Metal and glass. If anything connects the worlds of classic modern architecture and today’s luxury cars, it is an elemental application of materials that fuse the grace of the great outdoors with the comforts of a well-appointed interior.
In recent years, various automakers have leveraged the simile of Palm Springs Modernism Week t

During a recent Sunday drive along Ortega Highway, I had the misfortune of traveling behind a truck hauling what appeared to be a cement mixer. It was a tragedy of epic proportions considering my ride. I was on board the latest Ducati.
Though many people regard the bike as “entry level,” for those who have never had the oppor

Electricity blackouts are highest during hot summer afternoons when buildings throughout Southern California crank the AC. But a new project to help offset high electricity demand is getting an early start.
This week, Southern California Edison announced a pilot program that seeks to better understand electric vehicle drivers’ char

The sixth model in the ever-expanding Indian Motorcycle lineup was revealed last week, and it is the most modern looking of the bunch. Powered with the same 111 cubic-inch engine as the other Chief bikes, the $16,999 Chief Dark Horse features skirted fenders and the Indian warbonnet in a motorcycle that is otherwise almost entirely black.

For most people, 2025 is still a long way off. But for the world’s automakers selling vehicles in the United States, it’s beginning to feel uncomfortably close.
One decade from now is the deadline for manufacturers to achieve a national fuel economy standard of 54.5 mpg. In January, the average fuel economy of new cars, SUVs,

With its new Trail’ster Concept unveiled Thursday at the Chicago Auto Show, Kia boldly goes where its bestselling Soul CUV has never gone before: off road. An “urban escape” vehicle intended for active lifestyles away from the city, the Trail’ster is based on the Soul but expands its utilitarianism with a fully retractabl

It’s an annoyance anyone who drives into downtown L.A. has to deal with: The seventh circle of hell known as parking.
Alluring as that Disney Hall concert may seem, exciting as that Kings (versus Ducks) game is at Staples Center, the aggravation of where to park, how much it will cost and whether it’s safe remains.
Bu

The roads that wind their way in and out of the town best known for its apple pie felt like home to Hans-Joachim Stuck. The German Formula One racer with a pair of 24 Hours of LeMans wins to his credit careened around country corners at double the posted speed limit, avoiding trees and fence posts that lesser drivers would no doubt meet up close

When Yamaha’s cruiser division released its wannabe Harley-Davidson Sportster in 2013, even the company’s brass were unsure how the Bolt would fare. Motorcycle sales were only beginning to stabilize after years of debilitating declines that reduced new model flow to a trickle.
A priced-right, air-cooled V-twin wasn’t ex